


For All Of This

by gnimaerd



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Christmas, F/F, F/M, holiday fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 17:00:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2858255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnimaerd/pseuds/gnimaerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prerequisite fluffy flarrow holiday fic; Joe West hosts Team Arrow for Christmas, gets more than he bargained for in the form of potato latkes, Lance sisters, an assassin and... is that Barry and Iris making out under the mistletoe?</p>
            </blockquote>





	For All Of This

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place approximately a year into the future of the current canon of both shows, presuming Iris eventually finds out about Barry being The Flash and both Oliver and Sara return from the dead.

Joe West realises he’s bitten off more than he can chew over the whole ‘inviting Team Arrow over for Christmas’ thing, when not one but three cars pull up outside his house the afternoon of the 25th of December.

(Wow, so he needs to have words with Barry about allowing him to propose over-ambitious hosting plans whilst under the influence of four cups of Grandma Esther’s eggnog. The dude is permanently, if unwillingly, sober nowadays – he can take a turn at being the responsible adult for once).

Felicity Smoak, bless her, bounces up his driveway ahead of anyone else, wearing a bright blue and yellow sweater adorned with dreidels and menorahs, brandishing Tupperware.

“Happy holidays!” She declares, thrusting the Tupperwear at him, “donuts and latkes. Because my Bubbe might actually rise from her grave and come smack me in the head if she knew I was doing Christmas without at least attempting to educate my gentile friends in the ways of my people.”

“Where did you get donuts on Christmas day?” Joe blinks at the box, and the blond only winks at him in a way that he suspects would make him weak-kneed were he twenty years younger (what had Barry called this woman? ‘Super hero catnip’? Oh yeah, he can see it.)

“Magic,” she waggles her fingers, “also, I promise you, we all brought food.”

“Oh thank God.”

She grins at him. (He definitely sees it).

In the next five minutes Joe is introduced to Thea Queen, her chisel-jawed boyfriend, the Lance sisters – both of whom, he’s fairly certain,  have been both Oliver’s ex and the vigilante known as the Canary at various points in the recent past – their father, the boyfriend of one (Ted Grant – Joe remembers his boxing career so at least that’s easy), and the girlfriend of the other (hands down the most intimidating woman Joe has ever laid eyes on, the impression somehow not at all lessoned by the addition of a handmade looking sweater bearing a snake in a santa hat).

Joe West gives up trying to hold on to everyone’s names almost immediately. There is also John Diggle, who he knows and his – wife? Yes – and baby. Sara. Or was that one of the Lance sisters?

Cisco observes, wide-eyed, the crowd of people in the West household hallway, and elbows Barry in the ribs. “Okay, how many of these guys have stuck on a mask and punched some bad guys? Cause this is so, so super cool right now. Is that the Canary? Which one is the Canary? It’s the blond, right?”

“They’re both blond, Cisco.”

“Yeah but like – the blonder blond. The one with the – is that her girlfriend? She has a girlfriend? Cause that is beyond hot – ”

“He understands exactly who he’s objectifying, correct?” Nyssa cuts in, smoothly, “or would he prefer that I demonstrate the direness of that error for him?”

Cisco promptly flattens himself against the nearest wall. This woman is at least six inches taller than him and Barry is pretty certain she’s armed – it’s something about the way she’s smiling. It’s the kind of smile that heavily hints at the presence of multiple concealed knives.

“Ah, this is Cisco,” Caitlin emerges from the kitchen, wiping her hands on the frilly ‘Mrs Claus’ apron that Iris bought Joe as a joke last December, and offering a bright, helpful smile as she grasps Cisco by the arm “he’ll be coming into the kitchen now and refraining from speaking again for a while, right Cisco? Good – yes. Nice to meet you, by the way, thank you for coming, nice sweater.”

“Thanks, I made it for her,” Sara Lance appears at Nyssa’s elbow, far friendlier and yet somehow no less intimidating than her girlfriend – something about the clearness in her eyes, the little lines around them that make her look older than she is. She tugs the front of Nyssa’s sweater to demonstrate the santa-hatted snake to full effect. “It’s cute, right? I thought it was cute.”

“You are very lucky that I love you,” Nyssa rolls her eyes.

“Don’t I know it, babe.”

“I may have spent the majority of my life in areas of the world where Christmas is not customarily celebrated – but I was generally under the impression that snakes were not considered traditionally festive.”

“Yeah but this one has a hat.”

“I see.”

And Sara grabs Nyssa’s arm and pulls her into the living room with another bright, easy smile at Barry, calling to her dad as she goes. Barry retreats to the kitchen, in the vague hope of getting Iris alone for thirty seconds – but the kitchen is already so crammed full of people that that hope evaporates almost immediately.

Oliver and Felicity follow him in holding hands, and Barry actually has the gall to look smug when he spots them.

 

“Hi guys,” he glances from Felicity to Oliver and back, expectantly, like he wants an announcement or something.

 

But Felicity only taps Oliver on the chest and deposits her tupperwear on top of his casserole dish. “I’m going to say hi to Iris.”

 

He nods, and she squeezes his arm before making her way through the crowd to where Iris is fighting for space at the stove, brewing coffee, leaving Oliver and Barry to find somewhere to deposit a casserole dish of what turns out to be mac and cheese, and Felicity’s fried goods.

 

Oliver stays stubbornly silent, ignoring Barry's pointedly raised eyebrows whilst they seek out a corner table, until it's unbearable. “What?”

 

“ _Guys like us don't get the girl, Barry_ ,” Barry breaks out his best – his absolute best – Arrow impression, and Oliver narrows his eyes.

 

“I – do not sound like that.”

 

“Uh, yes you do. I've been practising the voice, okay, I think you'll find that it's pretty accurate.”

 

“Why the hell would you be practising that?”

 

“You know. Just in case.”

 

That doesn't answer Oliver's question. Barry shrugs. “You had to let Digg wear the Arrow suit once, right? What if I have to do it some day?”

 

“That is not going to happen.”

 

“You don't know that!” Barry points out, with a grin. “What if there's some kind of – vigilante emergency and you have to be in two places at once? What if you marry Felicity and want to go on a honeymoon some day?”

 

Oliver's jaw tightens.

 

Barry quirks his head. “What, too soon? Cause you guys have been practically matrimonial since I first met you, okay, I can't help it if you've only just worked out – whatever you needed to work out.”

 

Oliver continues his tight-jawed glare which, Barry reckons, might actually be covering something more self-conscious  – somewhere under all that manly, manly angst, Oliver Queen is a big dumb sap and his gaze has gone back to Felicity hugging Iris and his mouth has quirked, slightly –

 

And then Iris is bouncing over to them. “Oliver! Hi!”

 

“Hi,” Oliver smiles at her, properly – a great big trademark Oliver Queen lady-melting smile and Iris is, immediately, all of a flutter (Barry tries, very hard, not to roll his eyes. He's not jealous of that level of charisma. Not at all).

 

Iris's gaze is bright and momentarily just a little too knowing, though. Oliver glances at her for a moment longer, then at Barry.

 

“You told her.”

 

It's not a question.

 

Barry shrugs, helplessly. “We made a deal!”

 

“No more secrets,” Iris pats Barry, affectionately. “Not after – you know. Anyway. I made him.”

 

Oliver groans, softly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Barry.”

 

“I don't keep secrets from her!” Barry flaps his hands, “I can't, it's really bad for my mental health. And my physical health. In that when I lie to her and she finds out she beats the crap out of me. She is surprisingly strong.”

 

“Tiny but mighty,” Iris prods him in the arm. “And also I didn't beat you up. I slapped you, once. Which you totally had coming.”

 

“Yeah,” Barry glances down, sheepishly.

 

“You know it's not all bad – you could give me a statement for my blog,” Iris spreads her hands, eyeing Oliver warmly, “might help the Arrow's public image problem, if my readers could hear something from you – ”

 

Oliver grits his teeth – just as Felicity returns to them, with a mug of black coffee which she pushes into Oliver’s hands. “For grumpyface here – Thea had him up till three carolling last night and then out of bed at six this morning for presents. And she’s his baby sister, so he doesn’t know when to tell her ‘no’. I pleaded Judaism and stayed in bed like a sane person.”

 

Iris doesn't miss the way Oliver's hand settles in the small of Felicity’s back, drawing her carefully into his personal space. Iris’s eyebrows quirk, but she doesn't comment on it until ten minutes later when she has dragged Barry into the scant privacy of the back porch. There she proceeds to smack him vigorously in the arm.

 

“I thought you said you’d told me everything! You promised!”

 

“Hey! Ow!” Barry rubs his bicep – she really is disturbingly strong, “what? What didn’t I tell you?”

 

“About – that!” Iris gestures back in the general direction of the kitchen, “How long has that been going on?”

 

“Pretty sure kitchens have been a thing since humanity first discovered fire, Iris.”

 

Iris apparently doesn’t find that to be a satisfactory answer because she smacks him in the arm again.

 

“Ow! Okay – seriously – I didn’t know,” Barry hops back out of the way of further assault, “I mean – Oliver and Felicity have always been a bit – complicated. But I didn’t know they’d actually… got there. Okay?”

 

“I feel like even more of an idiot for trying to set you two up,” Iris pinches the bridge of her nose, “seriously, Barry, you couldn’t have said something?”

 

“There was nothing to say! Felicity was always really adamant that her and Oliver were never gonna happen and there wasn’t much reason to think she was wrong.” Barry shrugs, considers telling Iris about the whole ‘guys like us’ line – maybe subject Oliver to some of that patented West arm-smacking, “I mean I like the guy but he’s not at all into his feelings. He messed Felicity about for a long time.”

 

Iris raises her eyebrows. “He messed her about?”

 

“You know – all that sad hero crap,” he breaks out the Arrow impression again, “ _I’m too full of angst to express how much I want to bone you with actions so I’m going to stare at you longingly from under my hood, tell you I love you and then insist I can’t be with you for reasons that are manly and dumb. And then probably I’ll fuck off and die for a while and leave you to tend our love fern and mourn my passing all without ever actually doing something about my deep and unwavering need to bone you._ ”

 

Iris cracks up. “Their what?”

 

“They have a fern. It’s a long story.”

 

Iris shakes her head. “Great Arrow voice, by the way.”

 

“I know, right? I’ve been practicing.”

 

“I am so glad you’re not like that.”

 

“Yeah, no, if I ever get like that you can totally hit me as much as you like.”

 

She plants a kiss on his cheek, for good measure, and it turns into something else almost immediately, because they’re them and they woke up in the same bed this morning: the first time they’ve shared a bed without it ending or beginning in sex in the three weeks they’ve been together. Joe West has been all bright-eyed and glow-y about them getting together, finally, but Barry is not feeling ready to test his foster-father’s good will by actually having sex with his daughter under his roof with him a hundred feet down the hall.

 

“Whatever you two clowns are up to out here,” the man himself sticks his head out onto the porch, minutes later, brandishing another apron, “unless you are actually currently in the act of bringing my grandbabies into the world I am gonna suggest that you get your skinny butts back in here and help me feed these good people. And you can take your hands out of my daughter’s jeans right this moment, Mr Allen.”

 

Dinner is chaotic but good natured, loud and kind of eclectic because Team Arrow has really disparate views, apparently, about what constitutes ‘Christmas food’ (from Oliver’s mac and cheese to Nyssa’s tins of caviar). Around the table, Barry notes that the entire Lance family are sporting handmade Christmas sweaters. Quentin Lance has Christmas baubles, Laurel has candycanes and gingerbread men and Sara seems to have reserved for herself a slightly lumpy number covered with tiny Christmas trees and stars. Barry keeps an eye on them between courses and becomes fairly certain that Sara must also have made Felicity’s Hanukkah confabulation – and the slightly lop-sided reindeer-patterned affair that Oliver has on.

“Turns out there’s not much to do when you’re in hiding from the League of Assassins,” Sara tells him, when he asks her about it after dinner, producing a cloth bag inside which there turns out to be another half-made sweater – though this one is much smaller. “For the baby. She’s got my name, I figure I owe her a sweater, too.”

“Yeah, how’d that happen?” Cisco is hanging over the back of the sofa, and has most likely regained his proximity to Sara Lance only because Nyssa is on the other side of the house playing poker with Joe, Quentin, Laurel and Felicity, “the baby’s named after you, right?”

“I was murdered the same night she was born.”

“Uh,” Cisco blinks, and clearly decides that in a world where he has a friend who can run faster than the speed of sound, a woman who has been murdered and yet is still somehow sat in front of him knitting baby clothes is less of a stretch than it should be. “Awesome. I mean. Not awesome. But awesome that you’re – not murdered anymore.”

Sara smiles, tolerantly.

Felicity, of course, beats everyone soundly at poker, earning herself a rare genuine smile from Nyssa and several really terrifying knives which the Heir to the Demon put into the pot at the start of the game. Then the IT expert saunters into the living room in search of Oliver, and finds him asleep in an armchair sporting the reindeer antlers that Iris put on his head sometime between the Turkey and the Christmas pudding (“They match your sweater!”).

Six AM presents and two mugs of eggnog on top of the really ridiculous meal they’ve all just consumed has likely helped – but really, it’s been a long damn year, and Oliver finally passing out is probably kind of overdue. Felicity is almost tempted to leave him to sleep like the deliciously tuckered out little superhero that he is – almost.

She drops into his lap with a smooth, easy movement that startles him awake with a grunt.

“God – ”

“Nope, just me,” she pets him, affectionately, “I got something for you.”

And she tugs the antlers off his head, and replaces them with a gold paper crown, retrieved from a cracker in the kitchen. “Much better.”

“Mm,” he taps it, “cause I’m a Queen, right? Clever.”

“Yeah, see,” Felicity points at her temple, “this? Not just a pretty face.”

“Never had any doubt about that,” Oliver promises, yawning, as she settles more comfortably against his chest, slipping an arm around his neck and smacking a kiss to his cheek. Oliver turns his face up to hers for a proper one, though – and she obliges with an easy, sleepy smile – she tastes like wine and chocolate.

Her weight in his arms is warm and comforting, her cheeks a little pink from whatever she’s been drinking. Oliver can smell the perfume he bought her for the first night of Hanukkah, and he can see the little silver star of David he made her for the last under the neck of that monstrous sweater. She lit her menorah with him for the first time this year and he remembers watching her face under the flickering candle light and thinking _fuck_.

And suddenly he’s full of so much affection for her that he could scoop her up right this instant and carry her off to do obscene things in the back seat of his car for the rest of the night.

But he’s enjoying this, too – this sleepy, fuzzy, contented closeness. He brushes his nose to hers and feels her smile, settling into him like a blanket. He likes that he can hear Thea laughing in the kitchen with Laurel, knows everyone (living) who really means anything to him is safe, fed, warm and in his immediate proximity, and that he and Felicity are in their own little bubble on the edge of it.

He’s not used to this kind of thing; he’s not been that lucky bastard with the beautiful girl in his lap for a very, very long time. That seems to be more Barry’s line of expertise, given how completely unsubtle he’s been around Iris all evening – the two are, as far as Oliver can tell, currently in the hall outside making out under the mistletoe. But he could get used to this: Felicity Smoak tucked against his chest in a warm living room, Sara teaching Cisco how to knit on the sofa, Quentin asleep at her side (he gave up the poker game an hour or so earlier, is now snoring, audibly), and Diggle playing with his daughter on the floor. A decent meal, a decent crowd, someone warbling about merry little Christmas’s somewhere in the background – it’s all… Christ it’s all more than he’s ever thought possible.

Felicity grins at him, still pleased with herself about the paper crown, swinging her legs where they’re propped over his knee. Then she presses a gentler, more considered kiss to his mouth, and lets her head drop to his shoulder. 

“So, how’d you like all this Christian revelry?” He asks her, toying with the strands of hair that are coming loose from her ponytail.

“Mm,” she purses her lips, “actually I think a lot of this is basically Pagan in origin. Good food, though. Good company. Needed more donuts.”

Oliver drops a kiss to the top of her head. “Next year.”

“’kay.”

She heaves a deep, contented sigh, bunching one fist in his reindeer sweater, and Oliver smoothes the plain of her back for a moment, feeling her settle, feeling how incredibly grateful he is for this – for all of this.

“Oliver?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you ever feel lucky?” She shifts a little, presses her face to his neck, up under his jaw. “Cause I do. Just right this moment. Just a little.”

And Oliver wraps her up in his arms and squeezes her tight. 


End file.
